okay okay so can you all hear me yes perfect so I'm H I'm working at GIS set and I'm very honored to uh have the session today um which is Early Childhood interventions tailored for lowi income and Rural settings and I think with the opening ceremony we all already have heard that inclusive education is just um is a buzz word but it contains very very different topics and we should uh look upon them all and here we have to focus on Early Childhood interventions which I personally also like a lot because I am a whech driver as you as you can see and for those who cannot see me I am I'm very uh completely uh green uh trousers and t-shirt and a West um also to be the the color of the EUR project today and I'm very delighted to um to give the floor today to my awardees and uh yeah we are just searching for another presenter but we will just go on now because we don't have the time as you all know and um yeah I'm very delighted to present here F actually five award um and we having Pakistan Bangladesh then we have the US which is here at my right with Kate uh with uh Kate Miller and I will just uh shortly give the word to you that you present uh all of us and yeah welcome that you are here uh and uh I will just give the floor to you to present just um your yourself and say your organization and your name please and I will start with dear Kate so just say your name and then we present yes and then we go over to tabish shat hi my name is tabish Shazad and I'm representing kdsp from Pakistan great thank you so much then we have uh Diana wincent online so also a warm welcome to all person that are watching us online this session here um so can you can you speak Tiana do you hear us yes do you hear me yes yes we hear you very well yeah thank you and I'm Diana Joseph representing the Fourth Way Foundation from India and physically in the room with you all are two teammates of mine TM G finally known as Ravi G and suar Rana in the audience as well so they've come all the way from India to join you all um um and I'll be here with you online great so um then we have your colleague here which is on on the left hand uh on the right hand side from my side uh could you quickly just introduce your name please as Diana said that my name is Zam but people call me Ravi because it's a difficult name to pronounce but you can all call me Ravi and we work along together on inclusive education thank you thank you so just to say that Diana is doing the presentation online but um if there are some questions that also uh um tiam could answer then you can also post this question to him later in the end of our session so and that takes me to the last uh presenter which is um hi I'm surval I'm here on behalf of my organization Love For Life rehabilitation services I flew down from India New Delhi exactly and last not but last but not least in the last minute we have farida yes M hi sir yeah hi this is farida I'm from Bangladesh I'm representating disable Rehabilitation and research Association okay thank you so much dear dear Wy so um yeah I'm really proud that we're having such an international round here that's really great um I'm personally also working for for another country um where I'm working in Germany but I'm working for a project in Yemen as an inclusion adviser and I'm also quite into the inclusive education uh space Also in my earlier years of professionality so um that really um makes me looking forward to the session here and um yeah also a warm welcome to all our sign language interpreters they are also very important and of course with no further Ado I would like to start with the first presentation and we will begin with tabish Shazad if I pronounce it right it's your turn please go ahead thank you Al hello everyone um my name is tabish Shazad and I'm a 5.8 feet t a female with black hair and today I'm wearing black clothes with a colorful scarf first of all I would like to congratulate and thank you and VI the elel foundation and the zero project team for such a wonderful Gathering today where everyone shares their mission of having a world with z barriers thank you for giving me and my colleague Mahar the opportunity to represent our country at the zero project conference and talk about the work KD kdsp does back home kdsp a Down syndrome organization was born out of a beautiful born out of a birth of a beautiful soul that you can all see in the picture how do I move the presentation yes thank you it is a nonprofit organization that was launched in March 2014 by a group of concerned parents and individuals who due to limited support and resources available realized a need for a platform for those with Down Syndrome hence kdsp was formed with the mission to Advocate the value acceptance and inclusion of people with Down syndrome in our country and aims to provide them with the opportunity to lead independent and fulfilling lives we understand the needs of individuals with Down syndrome and their loved ones so from the moment a family with a child with Down Syndrome is introduced to us kdsp embarks on a journey with them until they feel empowered included and equal members of society we serve as a boat for our family Network as they navigate the Waters of Life carrying them through our six areas of service can I operate my presentation from here yeah in order to make Services more accessible to parents and to bridge the gap kdsp aims to provide a One-Stop solution as a first of its kind we provide all Services Under One Roof from the time of the child's birth until they are independent individuals we act as a One-Stop holistic solution for children with Down Syndrome I'll briefly take you over our six areas of services which are we provide family support to empower parents we inform the world about Down syndrome to create a more inclusive Society through awareness we provide access to Affordable high quality Health Care to ensure complete peace of mind for the parents we focus on skills and talents of individuals with Down Syndrome through vocational training and talent development programs we provide children with Down Syndrome to access mainstream Educational Systems lastly we provide speech therapy occupational therapy and physical therapy for children with Down Syndrome to help achieve their developmental Milestones Timely when we talk about education there are multiple obstacles that children with Down Syndrome face when it comes to accessing quality education the first one being School Readiness in comparison to typical students these children need just a little extra accommodation and adjustment to help them be ready for mainstream schools this early intervention is crucial to help develop a more solid foundation second problem is transitioning into mainstream schools as there are very few schools that are inclusive and very little leadership byy in as well there is very limited information amongst the parents about these schools another challenge is that the mainstream schools have when it comes to enrolling students with Down Syndrome while they are legally obligated to admit students with special needs there is little or no enforcement at all schools don't want to invest in inclusion for them it is the harder path to take and so they often refuse Admissions and even when they do the teachers and staff are simply practicing inclusion because they have been mandated to but don't have the inclusion mindset that's where kdsp preschool program comes into play specifically designed to prepare a child with Down Syndrome for a confident transition into mainstream schools taking into account each child's needs the purpose of this preschool program is to help students become ready for mainstream school by focusing on their motor cognitive and social skills and teaching them basic self-help skills by nurturing their individual strengths this is also backed by financial support to parents so that the child's development does not get infect affected by any barrier to dive a bit deeper into our program we take in children between the ages of 1.5 to 3 who might also be taking other services from kdsp these children are part of our program for one year where through individualized education plans we work to enhance their social intellectual and physical skills their typical day starts with circle time to help with their social and cognitive skills then they move on to smaller group Gatherings where with a ratio of two students per teach they work on different skills at each station and then they end their day with an outdoor play to focus on their gross motor movements this entire program also enables them to develop better sitting tolerance healthy parental attachment and better routine to help our families with the challenges they face other than School Readiness transitioning into mainstream schools we conduct regular parent trade training sessions which could all include sessions on how to work with their children how to manage their behaviors how to understand what inclusion is how to identify inclusive schools and many more and how do we do that we help connect parents with inclusive schools we have developed an inclusion index that fits our local context and we assess schools based on the same tool so that we can give parents complete information about these schools based on our criteria in terms of the schools we work with we work with their with them with their infrastructural and curriculum adjustment so that they feel more ready to enroll our students finally to capacitate the mainstream schools further we conduct awareness sessions as well now I have a video to share a story of a child who is currently enrolled in our preschool [Music] program education has always been a priority to us but when we learned about aina's diagnosis we were lost will she go to a school will any school be willing to admit her this caused a lot of anxiety and I felt helpless I had no idea what the right way was to prepare her for mainstream schools and on top of that I wasn't even sure if these schools were inclusive enough or not would they wholeheartedly accept my child luckily when Al started taking therapies at the Karachi Down syndrome program I was told that they have a school wedness program as well and that's when I knew I had to send Aina here when Aina started this school wedding program it provided her with an opportunity to socialize interact and sit for long durations comfortably through station time she also gets Focus attention by the teacher and she also ensures that she's learning better they focus on quality and constantly work towards Improvement I also love how they give special attention to activities to build and develop their fine motor skills through the program Al has also developed a routine which makes it so easy for me and her to follow one at home as well I'm really excited for her to join a mainstream school like the graduates before her I'm so excited for a future the best part is the journey with kdsp just doesn't end once the kids graduate after the admission process ksv not only helps us with the coordination with schools it also helps to create individualized educational plans and it also constantly Works towards creating inclusive landscape for Pakistan so so I'm really happy to say that Al is in safe hands thank you looking back I'm proud to say that kdsp has come a long way since the Inception of its School Readiness program and 80 plus adorable children with Down Syndrome have graduated from this program due to these early inter ventions and trainings of around 300 plus staff and Educators in 60 plus mainstream schools at least 85% of our graduates have been enrolled in mainstream schools the program in itself is sustainable as it is replicable easily there is a structured plan in place available tools knowledge and training modules this is proven by the fact that the we were able to successfully set up our third facility very recently in another city this is not to say that there were no challenges the biggest one being lack of social inclusion at multiple levels and dimensions existence of financial challenges and regulating inclusion quotas so the rights are not just passed but ensured lastly I would like to talk about what are the next steps of kdsp yeah I'm sorry could you wrap up a little bit because we are running out of time just last thank you couple of minutes we plan to expand our preschool and inclusion programs by serving more children we would like to scale our models to other parts of the country we would also like to work on capacity building of mainstream schools through more awareness and sensitization sessions and teacher trainings advocating and lobbying for enforcing each child's right to education and last but not the least conducting and Publishing research for more contextualized approaches for students with Down Syndrome that's it thank you any questions so thank you so much uh tabish for this uh nice presentation and also this really um Lively video which shows us that inclusive education is so important and that also the the children with Down Syndrome they have their they should be in focus in this project and I think that's really unique and with this um if you have some questions please uh note them down and you can post them later in the end of the session so I will make sure that you all can make your your quotes and your your questions um and with this um I would like to hand over from Pakistan to India so the first presenter from India because we have uh two here um but I will go now to uh Diana Vincent online and uh not forgetting that jam G is also sitting here on the panel thanks okay thank you I have studied languages but not these ones so so I'm sorry about it um yeah with no further Ado uh Diana it's now your turn and um yeah please speak about your project please right um I hope the presentation is visible there uh I yes I have the controls at my end so um to start off thank you to the zero project team uh thank you for the recognition of this award it means a lot to fourway Foundation because we've been on this project for two decades now and uh in two decades what we've achieved um is clearly the recognition and the acknowledgement that you're also giving us so thanks to the zero project team and thank you all for hosting us as well thanks hel for being the pan uh moderator here and letting me and Ravi be on this panel with you um so with a little introduction to fourway Foundation I just want to take you directly into the program that's got the recognition and the award uh we call the program schools where all belong technically because we believe that no child should be left out of the educational system because of any kind of special need or any need and what we do on this program has become a classic example where the state has emulated it and we're now looking at expanding into other regions other states in India because it is a replicable scalable model that we've created over the two decades it's very simple it's not rocket science it's stuff that anybody with a little willful approach can um replicate and uh have it have it in their own systems uh these are the five areas that primarily have given success to this model that we've built one is the access to education we believe all children have access to education in their local nearest government school or the school public school that is closest to them and we believe that children all children uh uh need to have an uidized education plan and when it comes to children with needs they definitely cannot be um sidelined because of the need for an IP we believe in access to therapy uh which is one of the key elements that supports their learning uh requirements through throughout the life cycle of the child mainstreaming is our key agenda because um we do see that the special ed space has actually contributed to eliminating and S side in and keeping kids away over time when they finish their specialization in schools but mainstreaming does have its own great benefits uh starting early on and Early Education mainstreaming plays a key role and our USP here in the entire program is that it's Tech enabled uh we have the entire program such uh that it's live data and children are supported by therapy and learning through Tech these are the five key areas where we believe that the IEP has to have key Intervention when children with Early Education programs are considered and all of this is uh in a philosophy that's built on learning Beyond a classroom and these are built on life skills learning and this module is available for anybody who is willing to replicate it and you know we're willing to share those insights this is the typical Learning System in An Early Education low resource setting all of what we built at fourway foundation with the philosophy of inclusion has always been in very remote Rural and the back of the Boondock settings these are the places where children really don't have the access to education they don't have um the systems that enable their um inclusion in a regular government School setting and that's where we go in and create these replicable models and children actually learn beyond the classroom not only children with special needs but then it's become a reverse inclusion process where children with regular uh learning needs also find this kind of a learning uh more exciting and fruitful and long lasting in terms of what they take home and what they build themselves with uh this is our biggest um know USP like I keep saying we've managed to create networks of people doctors therapists um all kinds of uh people who can render Services uh with a network program through our base they dial in into the remote settings where these therapists and people are not available and we Network and provide this bridge through technology uh that's helped all our children and to a great deal and also letting them see the outside world um from that little village and Rural setting they actually opening their life into a larger window of access and um process that really opens their uh minds and lives this is simply to show you that everything uh the life cycle of which child within the bridge School settings that we have is tracked uh data is very important to all of us and data privacy is something that we really struggle to keep an um uh for for children with disabilities so we've built these modules where data is live about every child every progress week on week month on month and technically over the year and over a middle school primary school or a high school setting we clearly can track the progress to say okay these are the early Skilling requirements for a child this is where the child needs to focus okay child cannot go beyond this but here these are the other options so this is something that we've clearly developed and we've got recognized by HP and they've digitized the entire module for us in the last two years uh just want to close saying that fourway Foundation has built something that is easily replicable and in low resource settings whatever we do even the slightest change that we bring to the lives of these children really uh create the biggest difference for their lives and we've been um you know documented by various um V various companies processes um inclusive education Frameworks and uh this is just one link for you to go and check of a latest feature on BBC uh with HP digitizing our entire module so with to close I just want to say that um we are happy that you have picked us at zero conference I have Mr Ravi uh with with you all at the venue suar Rana also from my team with you all there and I'm hoping you all will find the time uh to share speak understand our program and also link to see how we our networks can be built for each other's benefits thank you all and I'm open for questions if there's any at the end of the framework and rabi is there with you at the H thank you I hope I'm well and time H for you thank you so much Diana um I think this really also is I'm speechless so there are so so many projects going into inclusive education and we see that there are so many topics that have to be implemented in and yeah we see here that we are all working towards an inclusive education and um this is really great and we uh uh try now to go to another country uh because we see that the whole world is working towards it and we are here as a family to promote this and this takes me to um Fara yes mean from Bangladesh so go ahead please thank you uh I'm representating my organization named disability habilitation and research Association uh we are working around three decades and in Bangladesh uh where we are promoting inclusion and empowerment so before my presentation I I I'm willing to give the big thanks on my community my parents sponsor and the organizers who are really make it real so uh first I like to show a short videos um as a part of my presentation yeah somebody's really okay there is no sound we are lacking the sound yeah I mean if the sound is not working you can also describe what the video is talking about instead and we hope that you can find this out this is the program we are explaining uh called the varanda education where a 10 villagers are really come in this place is not oriented Place uh the parents are really running this school uh we call it uh vanand everybody is know the card education so this education program we started more than uh two decades with a little number of the children so I'm now going for the full presentation it's can somebody really helped with changing the slide okay yeah so actually we this education our age group is 3 plus to 5 plus the children with disabilities and also there is open for the children without disabilities as it is nonformal education so here we are really incompetent three things it is the early intervention early childhood education and also Focus the playb learning as I mentioned the a group is three plus so they are really uh very much really positive response we get when you use the play uh learning therapy uh for our children development actually this place is more already open place it's for 3 to 4 Hour session uh a community teacher which is trained by us and also Affiliated by the government uh she's the leader of this session and uh every week there is a three class session are really operating and we provided therapy for all intervention screening and also uh we do follow the developmental milestone how the childrens are growing you know that in our many cases in the three pluses many disability cannot be diagnosis and dasis so it's help a lot for the parents and for the teacher to understand the children growth about the disabilities especially the autism intellectual disabilities quite difficult to understand then uh here the most Innovative part we really success here that we engage the community volunteers one children for one volunteer and they are not the member of the families so we have around at present like 2,000 children with disabilities are in the community under this program and there is a 2,000 volunteer really each for one they are all the college student our motivation is that after some time they can make a friend in the community SN help to in you know Bangladesh is very inaccessible Community Road Transport is not accessible childrens cannot go to the school even the school are really open for the inclusion so these volunteers are really helping them to bring the children the education next please so here what I like to mention some some facts and figure that in our country we country context we do quite few research uh because this program we start in 2012 and we are really submit for this award after three research two research was the action research we found that 54.
74% have no formal education in Bangladesh the similar I listen today morning that we have 2 uh 241 million children are disabilities in the education age only 50% are enrolled in the education actually there is also a gap there is a big number are enrolled and admitted but they are not continuing their education the huge number of Dropout in the primary education level then uh there is a huge number of the Dropout in our local research we found this in Primary School level we have admitted around the 70% of the children disabilities but in the class three level at say 60% are dropped out because of the accessibility education and also the non-accessible environment so we found uh after one decade action research project to this uh that if we really good taking care of the ear Intervention Program then the number of Dropout is less because the schools Readiness are really happen parents are really more understanding the children needs and children also try to cope with their disability and also the education system so what we did next please actually we call it the tailor made culum and other name is appropriate curriculum because in our country early childhood education is part of the woman and children Affairs not is the part of the education Ministry even because they are early childhood development it is not a formal education and also it is not a part of the special education in a special education there is no Ed group but in a formal education five plus age group in five plus only mild and moderate children can get admitted in the normal school so because of that more number of Childrens cannot admited so that's why we make this uh early childhood education curriculum adapted version that children can learn and then can take according to the teacher are really trained on that way we also Incorporated therapeutic intervention lifelong learning as a part of Education as we all understand that when is early childhood education they need assistive device with adaptation they need uh epilepsy related medicine they need physiotherapy based on the children individual education or Rehabilitation assessment needs so here we really Incorporated the community hospital or the government hospital so they can get the referral facilities because the health needs is still exist with the children we call it run by the community in in fact we are not really agreed to call it as a project because we are running around two decades it's running most of the cases by the local government we are giving some money which is more the skill development more than the assistive devices but not for the other reason also many cases mothers are the teacher you know if you check the community most of the cases mother are really the big backbone of the children care so that's why we created a education curriculum and also the training curriculum for the mothers also train the volunteers next please so there is some numbers that we started in 2012 and until now we are incorporate 1,37 children who are really enrolled and continue their education in 2013 this education program over 7,800 student and across 35 schools in different communities most more than 600 student with disil newly thriving the mainstreaming classroom so what I want to tell you here that in our country education policy is excellent but children's cannot enroll especially the neurod development disabilities Asal policy intellectual disabilities or the de blind they cannot really uh enroll in the education so this program truly helpful for uh this target group uh next please we we do this project first pilot with us in three location urban and rural then we practice in a three different local Partners most of our opds organization people with disabilities you know they are working in the community and voluntarily and parents also living in the community and I as I mentioned the 10 villagers are really targeted for that one V the school so it's very Community centered and we have all the tools books IRP iip individual need assessment and also we have the online database for this all childrens because these childrens needs a very continuous and followup uh for their Rehabilitation also for their continuing education because this is the beginning so all the information reports credit cards is helpful for their referral education actually in in this 2024 we are really planning to expand it in other region in uh the Asia like Nepal and also the um Sri Lanka because we discuss these issues with our Network and they find it that this is one of the biggest challenge that parents looking a solution and we can give the solution to the parents of course there is a local stakeholder is necessary it could be the school it could be the parents organization it could be the opds it could be the NGO even it could be the government any stakeholder can lead this program so uh I have one more slide so for this education program we are really want to share two two more issues that uh this early childhood education many number of Childrens cannot really graduate and they cannot go to the further level because their opportunity of learning grow and their full potential cannot be in a small place a number of parents who are living in the rural area or the urban slum they don't have that uh economical or the social context they can continue their education so we adapted here the lifelong learning if a childrens cannot really continue uh their education skill we included their activities and daily livings life skill and lifelong communication when they are in the age group in five plus based on their Milestone and we are really D is presenting their education model second time since zero project we was awarded in 2022 for our lifelong learning and the non nonformal and vocational education and here I presenting about our early childhood educations we call it a bre education from Early Childhood to lifelong learning thank you so much for listening to us we have couple of videos we have digital platform for the teaching learning materials and also the parents guideline it is it is free for everyone it is in English and local language in Bangla thank you so much thank you so much f for this uh really great presentation and I'm really sorry about the fact that the video is not being uh shown with sound but I think we can make it sure that that you can watch the video afterwards um via YouTube or other media channel um and uh I just wanted to give you also some some bus words to to to conclude this um presentation I think this presentation really has shown us that uh participation in inclusive education is really key that without participation we we can't reach it and um it is we have to um to look for equal participation that every child is being served and that is also this peer counseling that there is one uh one uh one person for another person with a disability and they had that they are interacting with each other I think participation is here key and um this is just something what I wanted to ra to raise here again and um with this um I uh would like like to go all around the globe to the US to H Kate Miller uh with uh who is working at spoon so floor is yours thank you Hela uh thank you to the zero project Conference team to the SL foundation and to the UN for hosting this great event um like Hela said my name is Kate and I it is my honor to represent spoon uh and the work that uh we do and our innovation which is Count Me In uh a visual description I'm a white woman from the US with brown hair I'm wearing a black jacket over a copper shirt let me okay so we know that you're familiar with this population but before I dive in to spoon and our work I want to share a few key points that are important from a nutrition standpoint children with disabilities experience High rates of malnutrition due to the lack of inclusive nutrition support they are three times more likely to be malnourished and twice as likely to die from malnutrition up to 80% of children with disabilities have feeding difficulties which can lead to illness or death if unaddressed feeding skills or the ability to safely and efficiently eat and drink develop as a child grows like other areas of Child Development feeding skills develop over time and with opportunities to practice there are many reasons that a child may have feeding difficulties and feeding difficulties can impact many aspects of children's lives malnutrition and a lack of community- Based Services are major drivers of institutionalization for children with disabilities and improving nutrition and feeding can facilitate children being able to fulfill their rights to Health Community Living participation education and are more in line with the UN crpd children with disabilities are often excluded from nutrition policies programs and Investments either completely not mentioned or there's a lack of strategies to ensure their needs are met this includes not Gathering data on the nutrition and feeding status of children with disabilities in many countries spoon is a global NGO based in the us and we're dedicated to improving the feeding and nutrition of children with disabilities we've implemented programs in 21 countries and we work with local Partners to strengthen Health Care Systems and Empower local communities through a holistic approach spoon's model combines training a digital Health app and advocacy in a systemwide approach for sustainable impact to reduce malnutrition in children with disabilities this practice is implemented in partnership with civil society and governments in multiple settings spoon's work aims to strengthen support for children with disabilities and children without Family Care who often experience feeding difficulties and malnutrition the first component of our model is training spoon delivers training to equip families caregivers and professionals to safely nourish children with disabilities we train service providers in Health social work Child Care Rehabilitation and Early Child Development to build skills in nutrition feeding Disability and Child Development service providers use training to coach and support families and caregivers in safe responsing responsive feeding and nutrition practices such as diet diversity safe positioning and appropriate food textures traines acquire these skills through practice and application of knowledge spoons training has been delivered digitally in person and in a hybrid format while training is typically customized to the needs of the partner and the project it covers a variety of topics such as developmental feeding skills best practices for Meal Time specialized feeding techniques and counseling caregivers on nutrition and feeding to name a few the second component of our intervention model is our web-based app Count Me In This digital Health app provides customize support for ongoing application of Knowledge and Skills counten is designed to bridge training with practice to strengthen nutrition care delivery for children with disabilities while at the same time generate data it's a web-based app and it has four modules we look at growth anemia Meal Time and developmental screening uh each module guides the user through a series of questions and tasks uh so a nurse for example could use Count Me In to assess and monitor feeding difficulties growth development or anemia anemia status for children over time on this slide you can see screenshots from some of the pages found in Count Me In after each assessment the app generates individualized care plans including who growth charts nutrition recommendations and specialized feeding techniques and then service PR providers use those recommendations to coach families and caregivers in safe and responsive nutrition and feeding practices Count Me In also supports improvements in nutrition and feeding practices at facilities like schools daycares community centers or in residential care users get data and a variety of easy to read reports to assist with their decision- making as well the third component of spoon's model is advocacy as trained service providers use Count Me In the data collected provide insight into the feeding and nutrition needs of the children with disabilities in their program or throughout their country and then it demonstrates change over time we always work to ensure that the data and evidence our programs generate are shared with decision makers and used to increase understanding of the need to focus on this population we don't just replicate our successful trainings and programs we also leverage our data to reach as many children as possible through advocacy depending on the context this could include reaching out to policy makers to educate them providing technical input to policies guidelines and tools for example our work has been used to inform policies in health and Alternative Care uh doing Outreach to nutrition program practitioners and funders or participating in or leading coalitions to advocate for others to use inclusive policies in 2022 spoon trained nearly 600 people in nine countries who in turn reached over 14,000 children we saw that number increase in 2023 uh as of January 2024 we have more than 4,000 children who've been assessed in count mean and we continue to see that number increase each year beyond that we estimate that millions of children will also benefit from uh the inclusive policies in our work we have had success reducing key indicators of M nutrition while also ensuring that children with disabilities are fed in safe and responsive matter among the 4,000 over 4,000 children monitored in count mean we've seen a reduction in rates of anemia of about 39% and wasting by about 21% training evaluations and internal program evaluations have shown us that not only does it increase Knowledge and Skills uh but we've seen improvements in screening referrals and sight level practices this work has contributed to advocacy priorities in lutu Zambia and Uganda in Zambia we advocated for our local Partners to the Parliamentary committee on Health Community Development and Social Services to prioritize children with disabilities and for inclusion in covid responses the public welfare awareness scheme and nutrition policies in Uganda we contributed to disability inclusion and National nutrition guidelines we've also influenced Global policies including legislation on inclusive Early Child Development and USF funded International programs in addition to the immediate impact improving nutrition has long ranging benefits for children proper nutrition and safe nurturing feeding environments provide essential building blocks for long-term Health growth and development they also contribute to Family Care and community living for children with disabilities before I wrap up let me just give you a few brief examples of our work in Zambia we're working with local Partners to incorporate nutrition into programs and policies that are serving families of children with disabilities in lutu alongside UNICEF lutu local partners and a multisectoral team we're linking developmental screening and nutrition screening in preschools and health centers and in Uganda we're integrating nutrition and feeding into family care and deinstitutionalization and improving data on nutrition and feeding status of children with disabilities Boon's comprehensive approach uh is is in order to make a sustainable impact um we believe that it can benefit children even beyond the immediate scope of our programs our systemwide approach supports sustainable impact to improve Services Family Care and policy environments it's adaptable to a range of contexts and allows Frontline workers and caregivers to implement safe responsive nutrition and feeding practices based on personalized care plans adapted to the needs of children with disabilities our approach has been replicated within and across countries we work in partnership with local partners and Technical advisory groups to contextualize um and align with relevant guidelines local customs and other context ual factors since 2016 pan has been translated into six languages and adopted in eight countries and spoons training has been used in more than 10 countries and uh we could not do this work without the generosity and commitment of our uh funders and the foundations and the donors who um contribute to our work and I see them at times so I'll pass it back to you thank you thank you so much uh Kate um I think this really shows that uh that um nutrition and um health is all going is all going in together when we're talking about education and it's really like the basement of that the people that the person and the children with disabilities are also able to really go to the school or to to to uh to go to school online and to have the energy to really uh also being trained and to interact with the other children so that that's really great and um also The Count Me In app also shows that ICT is also crucial in inclusive education and that there are very various ways to uh Implement all together and um then I go um to the last speaker of the session today um which is uh Sur aav another time from uh from India and uh and the um the her startup organization is based in you daily and uh yes SOI it's your turn please go ahead thank you Dr ladies and gentlemen I'm sagaral as hel introduced uh founder of Love For Life rehabilitation services so uh I really want to thank SL foundation for giving me and my partner himansa this opportunity to attend amazing conference and um I'm a Asian female from India and I stand 5.4 feet tall and I'm wearing a black and blue s today with a matching blouse black blouse I wear specs and um I'm have my hair a held in a bun so as you can see uh then my startup is Love For Life rehabilitation services and the motto for it is nurturing root for a stronger tree so uh before I start I'm very fortunate to present this work in front of you my startup provide homebased and online therapy therapeutic services pan India to to children from age majority of children are from age group two to six years so basically these children have intellectual difficulties physical disabilities or sensory integration issues ETC so before I take you forward I want to share a small personal story with you why I started this so in 20 n my mother she suffered stroke and she was paralyzed from the left side and um she was well she was home but she was paralyzed and there were not even a single occupational therapist available in our city to give her therapy so my father has to take a long break of six to eight months from her job and she bathed back to Delhi uh for her for her Rehabilitation so uh and once shifted back our base to Delhi uh there was it was very difficult and inconvenient inconvenient to carry her to take her to therapy centers or to hospitals so uh it was really inconvenient so so I thought if my mother is we are facing so much issue and there was Million others who must be facing the same issue so this is why I thought and I give this a try so the challenges I already discussed one challenge with you in my mother's story geographical Challenge and there there are multiple other challenges as you can see there Financial constraints uh these therapies are not cheap they are not cheap okay cultural barrier language barrier is a huge barrier uh integrated education reach is another and awareness there is very very less awareness when it comes to uh disabilities majorly intellectual disabilities and disabilities concerning integration issues sens integration issues like autism ADHD so rehabilitation services in India are divided into majorly into four four things like Hospital provide them rehabilitation centers private centers provide them there are NOS community centers and individual so when it comes to hospital hospitals are not are not in vicinity they are far so parents or patients have to travel to hospital rehabilitation centers they they don't give appropriate cre time slots as which are convenient to parents to for their children ngos ngos do not provide all the holistic care they might have a special educator or OT occupation therapist but not a speech therapist so it happens all the time and the issue with individual personal is there's nobody to guide them or uh to change the plan to monitor the progress Etc hey now lfl how l work lfl work in two ways in providing uh home based sessions the therapist goes to the home and second is online services so starting from initial assessment after initial assessment we do counseling of the parents and we tell them what support your child need and after that we we assign them a professional and the professional is not just one professional if a child needs uh occupation therapy at this some point but the team of professionals like speech therapist psychologist who will be giving support online uh if if the OT is going to the uh to the home the other professional will give support online and then we make a plan the plan consist of short-term goals long-term goals and then we we implement it and we keep tracking the progress so these are the few th therapies that we provide you can see occupation therapist speech therapist psychologist and special educators so impact so impact is um as a homebased service provider and online service provider we we don't change therapist the issue that I I listen from parents is the therap in centers and hospitals the therapist is change frequently one day there's another therapist so the repo building is not established so here with us we don't change uh therapist usually until parent ask for it so consistent care uh is given with the same therapist and there's flexibility of appointments uh if if if the parent or child is available at six from 6:00 to 700 p.m.
We give them that slot uh we we don't we don't give them our slot but we ask them what slot you need what is convenient to you and support to the family uh in forms of Education material training to parents for the home based program that parents can Implement at home and there's no waiting of course because uh the slaughter as per Parents Choice assured privacy and no accessibility Challenge and yeah we also help parents to understand the ergonomic need of the child if required and we do give um we do provide consultation if if they want to change the home environment some for the child to be more accessible the services focused to inclusive development we use all International standards multiple payment options are available and transparent cost structure we the the cost structure is same throughout the country integrating um interactive activity into therapy we we do give parent counseling Etc so value driven impact so uh as I discussed there are multiple issues when it comes to hospitals clinical setups and when it comes to Love For Life organization we are economical because parent are not traveling they're saving their time and money in traveling and we are definitely convenient for the working parent who reach off from off from home from office at 6:00 in the evening and then taking the child to therapy center it is really inconvenient so here we come in and we are really convenient so here I have few testimonials for you from the happy parents so I'll read one to you the the team is knowledgeable as well as empathetic in understanding the issue of the child and accordingly recommending a plan of action which eases the wor of parent the service is very prompt professional and occupation therapist provide knew the job well this is one that I read for you so working uh to overcome challenges so basically the the challenge that we Face uh and the parent face is impact funding qualified professional there are profession available but still we we we give our time and energy to uh to train them before after we hired them so lack of awareness and acceptance in parents and this comes as a big challenge in remote area and ruler area because uh this intellectual disabilities are still considered taboo insurance coverage uh in my country insurance coverage is very very less when it comes to rehabilitation services very uh few people are covered in insurance so it's a huge challenge maintaining cost Effectiveness uh and zero barrier infrastructure that's again being a developing country it's a barrier for us the next step for making India truly inclusive for us uh we want to integrate more and more technology U so that we can reach more and more people in remote and rural area and uh remote monitoring utions Yeah so basically uh we we do monitor our our children who are work whom we are working with but we wanted to take it to Tech with the technology so that we can constantly monitor their progress through technology and parents can also be the part of that uh partnership and collaborations we are open to partnership and collaboration policy and advocacy as I told you insurance is a um is a huge issue in in my country so we are advocating for we do advocacy for that and Community Network um so before I end um I I'm looking forward for the more inclusive World uplifting family and uplifting entire community in all walks of life um through collaboration and partnership and also yesterday at the Parliamentary event Mr martinell said something which I totally I want to I stand by it inclusion is a prequest for a self-determined life and Prospect thank you yes a great thank you also from my side to all the overes and presenters here I think it was really overwhelming what we have heard here and seen here and um um throughout all the different countries and also I think the last word from my side to the LA to the presentations is that really your your name of your organization love for life I think this is also crucial if we really would like to to um to help all the people all the all the children with disabilities and all those the people who are um getting the um higher qualified education than we really should do it by our our heart and I think we keep we keep doing this here in in this room and all the other rooms with the zero project family and um with this I um yeah we have like a few minutes left and I would like to open the floor now to you for a couple of minutes the audience do you have any questions that you want to raise or remarks then please yeah there man over there can you please present yourself um hi U my my name is guy from sight Savers and I really want to thank the panel for their wonderful presentations I did noticed that in quite a lot of the these presentations there were talks about individual learning plans for children with disabilities now I mean given you know the fact that in in some contexts and I think probably in in in in in in Pakistan India and Bangladesh often you've got large numbers of children um relatively few resources may be caregivers with limited levels of literacy I'd be really be really interesting to know how you manage individual learning plans in those contexts and whether you think that in some cases actually um an individual learning plan may not be necessary for some children thank you of course yes actually as you very correctly pointed out for all children with disabilities because they have some specific characteristics they cannot learn in a regular school because of their own specific characteristics so the teacher has got a pay attention to them for them to catch up with the remaining children with are going to the school going so that is what I Bas that's how we came up with this plan individual learning plan in fact di when she was making the presentation she shows some five areas areas in which these individual because these children they have not at all gone to school they need to be trained systematized into going into a school so that to prepare the children to perform to their Optimum level we before they join in a regular school we will have a consultation process correct me if I'm wrong correct how it works out other places also we have an individual consultation with the child his parent based on which he come up with a plan for him to him or she to join up in the mainstream schools so individualized education plan in a government school or in a private school is an important component for learning of children disabilities across the board but the problem is the problem is of the numbers the problem is of the numbers because the numbers of children with disabilities in India is so huge massive that it is not imaginable so we have to focus on each child and come up with a plan but it's a very very humongous problem because the details the devil is in the details so details need to be worked out for it to be effective yes ma'am over to you yes please please address that thank you so much to answer your first question the there is definitely limited um literacy so we as organization we work with um local uh family health workers and Asha workers who are definitely from the same area and they and they there's no language barrier there so we train them and they in in return train the parents so that's one thing that we do and uh to answer your second question IEP is not required for every child uh I think um no two individual are same so I think IP is needed for is good for every child because every They Might Be Few overlapping um issues but there might be more more to one child and L to another child so I think IP is is a good good way just go ahead thank you okay I just like to add on to it um so for us we make IPS for every child and as you rightly mentioned the literacy rate in Pakistan is of course very low hence that is well taken care of we have one-on-one sessions with the parents before we take in the child we assess their Environmental situations as well so fix say for example how literate the parent is that will be dependent on how much home plans we will be giving to the child and how much can be left onto the parent secondly iips are important because we take out student learning objectives out of those iips on a monthly basis that's how we monitor the development of that child it goes back to the iip which was set and every month we have separate slos which are the student learning objectives and that is basically The Benchmark against which we gauge the students performance if I thank you so much exactly Diana it's your it's your FL now thank you thank you yeah I'll do a quick wrap up just to be technically um answering that question um disability is divided like all of us know into mild moderate severe and profound and the mild and the profound categories that is the uh in the spectrum of the classification the mild and the profound like um the person in the hall is asking really the IEPs sometimes really can be overlooked and can be also um classified into groups like we can put children into groups and the mild categories can actually need not have an IEP in specific uh while the found also but it's for the moderate um and um you know severe that we really really have to focus on IEPs because their learning curves have shown greater impact in terms of IEP intervention so just being technical about it the mild and the profound we can actually um kind of work on uh Baseline stuff and see how they progress while the severe and profound really need IE plans that have shown uh the to be excelling in a whole lot of areas okay thank you so much Diana um is there someone from the online audience that would like to to put a question or to put something in the chat that I should raise okay thank you that's a good that's a good um good answer to know it um is there somebody else having another question now or are you feeling like they're jesting all this different information yeah thank you go ahead please yeah thank you for the nice presentation uh I really see there is some light for person with disability my but my question is uh do we teach r like others or do we have adapted curriculum because I see in many of the developing countries when we are talking we are always in the one size fits all every child has to read every child has to write is that the case also whereas I see there is a need of looking at adapted curriculum so that children can learn what they can learn instead of forcing them to learn things that they can use in their life thank you you so much we can have a quick answer before we close the session unfortunately would me I talked about the adopting curriculum actually I was talking about the early childhood education and that is group history plus we normal education we are saying it's a play group education so there is some area uh that H their developmental mind Stone and what they will learn so in practice most of the countries how far experienced this AG have very rarely they use very structured educational books and things we call it learn from the nature learn learn from the theme or product or the shape or size so on that concept we make some skeleton that where we can start with the children as I mentioned that PL play therapy is one of the important area the playbase education uh and it's a we have a partner working in us and they are giving a lot of emphasis for the children children developmental uh Aid the play therapy is very helpful so things is that in education for the children with disabilities who are the uh severly disabled or is very difficult to bring them in a mic education they need some adaptive uh curriculum which is the two types we are really practicing one is the teacher has some capacity and a guideline that how far he can adapt in the classroom another is that as education materials his range is quite high level which can adapt according to the children need and also the uh socioeconomical context thank you so much [ __ ] and I hope this really could add answer your question and uh yeah with this so we are we are at the end of our session um yeah I congratulate you and that you that you have been here in this room with us and thank you so much and I think um all the panelists would be open for for having other discussions with you uh right during the day or in the next days and we will see each other around the floor and the other rooms so thank you very much to the audience to the online participants and to the technical part here also and to the sign language interpreters as well